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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420806" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Truce of Piscataqua</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,<br>These huge mill-monsters overgrown;<br>Blot out the humbler piles as well,<br>Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell<br>The weaving genii of the bell;<br>Tear from the wild Cocheco's track<br>The dams that hold its torrents back;<br>And let the loud-rejoicing fall<br>Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;<br>And let the Indian's paddle play<br>On the unbridged Piscataqua!<br>Wide over hill and valley spread<br>Once more the forest, dusk and dread,<br>With here and there a clearing cut<br>From the walled shadows round it shut;<br>Each with its farm-house builded rude,<br>By English yeoman squared and hewed,<br>And the grim, flankered block-house bound<br>With bristling palisades around.<br>So, haply shall before thine eyes<br>The dusty veil of centuries rise,<br>The old, strange scenery overlay<br>The tamer pictures of to-day,<br>While, like the actors in a play,<br>Pass in their ancient guise along<br>The figures of my border song<br>What time beside Cocheco's flood<br>The white man and the red man stood,<br>With words of peace and brotherhood;<br>When passed the sacred calumet<br>From lip to lip with fire-draught wet,<br>And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke<br>Through the gray beard of Waldron broke,<br>And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea<br>For mercy, struck the haughty key<br>Of one who held, in any fate,<br>His native pride inviolate!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Let your ears be opened wide!<br>He who speaks has never lied.<br>Waldron of Piscataqua,<br>Hear what Squando has to say!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Squando shuts his eyes and sees,<br>Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.<br>In his wigwam, still as stone,<br>Sits a woman all alone,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Wampum beads and birchen strands<br>Dropping from her careless hands,<br>Listening ever for the fleet<br>Patter of a dead child's feet!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'When the moon a year ago<br>Told the flowers the time to blow,<br>In that lonely wigwam smiled<br>Menewee, our little child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Ere that moon grew thin and old,<br>He was lying still and cold;<br>Sent before us, weak and small,<br>When the Master did not call!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'On his little grave I lay;<br>Three times went and came the day,<br>Thrice above me blazed the noon,<br>Thrice upon me wept the moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'In the third night-watch I heard,<br>Far and low, a spirit-bird;<br>Very mournful, very wild,<br>Sang the totem of my child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''Menewee, poor Menewee,<br>Walks a path he cannot see<br>Let the white man's wigwam light<br>With its blaze his steps aright.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''All-uncalled, he dares not show<br>Empty hands to Manito<br>Better gifts he cannot bear<br>Than the scalps his slayers wear.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'All the while the totem sang,<br>Lightning blazed and thunder rang;<br>And a black cloud, reaching high,<br>Pulled the white moon from the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I, the medicine-man, whose ear<br>All that spirits bear can hear,-<br>I, whose eyes are wide to see<br>All the things that are to be,-</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Well I knew the dreadful signs<br>In the whispers of the pines,<br>In the river roaring loud,<br>In the mutter of the cloud.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'At the breaking of the day,<br>From the grave I passed away;<br>Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,<br>But my heart was hot and mad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'There is rust on Squando's knife,<br>From the warm, red springs of life;<br>On the funeral hemlock-trees<br>Many a scalp the totem sees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Blood for blood! But evermore<br>Squando's heart is sad and sore;<br>And his poor squaw waits at home<br>For the feet that never come!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Waldron of Cocheco, hear!<br>Squando speaks, who laughs at fear;<br>Take the captives he has ta'en;<br>Let the land have peace again!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the words died on his tongue,<br>Wide apart his warriors swung;<br>Parted, at the sign he gave,<br>Right and left, like Egypt's wave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, like Israel passing free<br>Through the prophet-charmed sea,<br>Captive mother, wife, and child<br>Through the dusky terror filed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One alone, a little maid,<br>Middleway her steps delayed,<br>Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,<br>Round about from red to white.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then his hand the Indian laid<br>On the little maiden's head,<br>Lightly from her forehead fair<br>Smoothing back her yellow hair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Gift or favor ask I none;<br>What I have is all my own<br>Never yet the birds have sung,<br>Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Yet for her who waits at home,<br>For the dead who cannot come,<br>Let the little Gold-hair be<br>In the place of Menewee!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Mishanock, my little star!<br>Come to Saco's pines afar;<br>Where the sad one waits at home,<br>Wequashim, my moonlight, come!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'What!' quoth Waldron, 'leave a child<br>Christian-born to heathens wild?<br>As God lives, from Satan's hand<br>I will pluck her as a brand!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Hear me, white man!' Squando cried;<br>'Let the little one decide.<br>Wequashim, my moonlight, say,<br>Wilt thou go with me, or stay?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Slowly, sadly, half afraid,<br>Half regretfully, the maid<br>Owned the ties of blood and race,-<br>Turned from Squando's pleading face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not a word the Indian spoke,<br>But his wampum chain he broke,<br>And the beaded wonder hung<br>On that neck so fair and young.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Silence-shod, as phantoms seem<br>In the marches of a dream,<br>Single-filed, the grim array<br>Through the pine-trees wound away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,<br>Through her tears the young child gazed.<br>'God preserve her!' Waldron said;<br>'Satan hath bewitched the maid!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Years went and came. At close of day<br>Singing came a child from play,<br>Tossing from her loose-locked head<br>Gold in sunshine, brown in shade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pride was in the mother's look,<br>But her head she gravely shook,<br>And with lips that fondly smiled<br>Feigned to chide her truant child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Unabashed, the maid began<br>'Up and down the brook I ran,<br>Where, beneath the bank so steep,<br>Lie the spotted trout asleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,<br>After me I heard him call,<br>And the cat-bird on the tree<br>Tried his best to mimic me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Where the hemlocks grew so dark<br>That I stopped to look and hark,<br>On a log, with feather-hat,<br>By the path, an Indian sat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Then I cried, and ran away;<br>But he called, and bade me stay;<br>And his voice was good and mild<br>As my mother's to her child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And he took my wampum chain,<br>Looked and looked it o'er again;<br>Gave me berries, and, beside,<br>On my neck a plaything tied.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Straight the mother stooped to see<br>What the Indian's gift might be.<br>On the braid of wampum hung,<br>Lo! a cross of silver swung.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well she knew its graven sign,<br>Squando's bird and totem pine;<br>And, a mirage of the brain,<br>Flowed her childhood back again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Flashed the roof the sunshine through,<br>Into space the walls outgrew;<br>On the Indian's wigwam-mat,<br>Blossom-crowned, again she sat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Cool she felt the west-wind blow,<br>In her ear the pines sang low,<br>And, like links from out a chain,<br>Dropped the years of care and pain.<br>From the outward toil and din,<br>From the griefs that gnaw within,<br>To the freedom of the woods<br>Called the birds, and winds, and floods.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, O painful minister!<br>Watch thy flock, but blame not her,<br>If her ear grew sharp to hear<br>All their voices whispering near.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Blame her not, as to her soul<br>All the desert's glamour stole,<br>That a tear for childhood's loss<br>Dropped upon the Indian's cross.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When, that night, the Book was read,<br>And she bowed her widowed head,<br>And a prayer for each loved name<br>Rose like incense from a flame,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With a hope the creeds forbid<br>In her pitying bosom hid,<br>To the listening ear of Heaven<br>Lo! the Indian's name was given.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420806" data-title="The Truce of Piscataqua de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its to..."></div>
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